Agentic Commerce! The Internet Is Being Rewired

Agentic Commerce: While Europe Debates Cookies, the Internet Is Being Rewired

While Europe is arguing about GDPR-compliant cookie banners, the U.S. has started to rewire the internet for a new kind of commerce. Not in theory. In production. With new announcements almost every day.

Tired of reading? We got you!

If you think this sounds exaggerated, you missed the news:

• Google just launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) - an open standard that lets AI agents discover products, compare options, and complete purchases seamlessly in the background.
• OpenAI now supports Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT, where users can find products and buy them directly without leaving the chat interface - powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol built with Stripe.
• OpenAI has also partnered with PayPal so users will soon be able to check out in ChatGPT using PayPal, and tens of millions of merchants will be automatically connected through this integration.
• Walmart's AI shopping assistant Sparky is live with ads and commerce features, and Walmart has teamed up with OpenAI to build “AI-first shopping experiences.”
• Meanwhile, Amazon is rolling out Sponsored Prompts, letting brands appear directly inside AI chats as part of the shopping flow.

These are not pilot experiments or distant plans. They are live, rolling out in the U.S., and expanding quickly.

This is not about better search. This is about machines buying from machines.

The age of agentic commerce is not near. It is already here.

And the uncomfortable truth is this: The infrastructure for the next ten years of digital trade is being built in Silicon Valley, not in Berlin, not in Walldorf, and not in Paris.

What Agentic Commerce Really Means

Agentic commerce means that AI systems do more than suggest products.

They can:

• find products
• compare prices and delivery times
• check availability
• place orders
• handle payment flows

The human does not browse. The human gives intent. The agent executes. Think less “chatbot with links” and more “autonomous purchasing layer on top of the internet.”

Google's UCP is a clear signal. It standardizes how products, prices, delivery, and checkout are exposed so AI agents can act on them. Shopify, Walmart, Wayfair, and others are already aligning with this model.

Once standards exist, behavior follows. And once behavior follows, market power shifts fast.

From “Human Chooses Product” to “Machine Negotiates with Machine”

For decades, digital commerce followed one simple pattern:

Human → Search → Website → Product Page → Checkout

Agentic commerce breaks this flow.

Now it becomes:

Human → Intent → AI Agent → API → Transaction

Your website is no longer the main stage. It becomes a backend service.

That changes everything.

If the buyer is an AI, then:

• emotional copy does not matter
• hero images do not matter
• fancy UX does not matter

What matters instead:

• structured data
• clean APIs
• real-time inventory
• delivery reliability
• price stability

The agent does not care about brand storytelling. It cares about signals it can trust. And it will drop suppliers that cause problems fast.

The Invisible Store Problem

Here is the part that keeps many retailers awake at night. If AI agents give the final recommendation, and sometimes even place the order, how does a store stay visible at all? If the agent scrapes data, compares feeds, and chooses silently, your brand may never be seen by the customer.

You still ship the product. You still handle returns. But the customer relationship belongs to the platform that runs the agent. Google. Amazon. Maybe OpenAI. Maybe Apple.

That is a dangerous shift. Because once you lose the interface, you lose:

• pricing power
• brand loyalty
• direct feedback
• long-term customer value

You become a supplier inside someone else's machine.

Are We Moving from SEO to AIO?

Short answer: yes. But it is not a clean break. It is an evolution. Classic SEO is about ranking pages. Agentic optimization is about being eligible for transactions.

Call it:

• AI Optimization (AIO)
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

The label does not matter much. What matters is the shift in focus:

• from pages to data
• from clicks to execution
• from persuasion to eligibility

If your product data is incomplete, slow, or inconsistent, the agent will not pick you. Not because you are bad. But because you are harder to reason about. In agentic commerce, operational truth beats marketing polish.

Is This Just More AI Hype?

No. But adoption will not be instant either. Consumers may not trust agents to spend money for them on day one. High-value purchases still involve emotion, context, and risk.

But two things are already happening:

• Agentic search is replacing browsing. People ask, “find me the best option,” not “show me ten pages.”
• Monitoring agents will become normal. Agents that watch prices, stock, and deals, then act when rules are met.

Once that becomes routine, full purchasing is a small step. And on the B2B side, this will move faster:

• procurement
• supply chains
• inventory bidding
• dynamic pricing

Machines already talk to machines there. Commerce is the next layer. So no, browsing will not vanish. But it will matter less per purchase.

The Rules Are Being Written in the U.S.

This part matters, and not just for Europe. Right now, agentic commerce is being shaped by U.S. platforms and U.S. standards. Google defines how product data is exposed.

Amazon defines how AI-driven ads and recommendations work. Payment flows are designed around U.S. networks and policies. If this becomes the default, retailers outside these platforms do not just compete.

They plug in.

They ship the goods. They run the warehouses. But the customer relationship belongs to the platform that controls the agent.

That is not just a tech shift. It is a market power shift. Because once protocols become global defaults, changing them is close to impossible.

History already showed this with search, app stores, and cloud platforms.

This is why “let's wait and see” is not neutral. It means accepting rules written elsewhere.

We Do Not Need More Shops. We Need Infrastructure.

This is where the real gap is. We do not need more online stores, more apps, or more marketplaces. We already have strong retailers, strong brands, and world-class logistics.

What we do not have are shared rails for agent-driven commerce:

• agent-native commerce protocols
• open transaction standards
• identity and payment layers designed for AI agents, not just humans
• data frameworks that protect merchant control over pricing and access

This is not something a single startup can fix. And it is not something retailers can solve one by one.

It is an ecosystem problem.

If there was ever a moment for large players to step up, it is now. Enterprise platforms. Retail networks. Payment providers. Logistics groups. Not to block agentic commerce. But to shape how it works, who controls access, and who owns the customer relationship.Because if the rails are built by a few U.S. platforms, everyone else will run on top of them.

On their terms.

What Retailers Should Do Right Now

Even if large-scale platforms take time, individual retailers can act.

Treat Structured Data as Core Business. Product data quality is no longer a tech detail.

It is your future sales channel.

Build APIs That Are Fast and Predictable. Agents will prefer stores that are easy to integrate and reliable.

Measure Operational Signals, Not Just Conversion Rates. Delivery delays, cancellations, stock mismatches - agents will learn from this.

Think About Brand Representation in AI Outputs. Soon, AI will speak for you. Decide what you want it to say.

Final Thoughts

Agentic commerce is not about robots replacing people. It is about interfaces shifting from screens to systems. Whoever controls the systems controls the market. Right now, those systems are being designed elsewhere. If Europe does not build its own agent-ready commerce infrastructure, we will still sell products. But we will no longer own the customer. And in commerce, that is the difference between being a brand and being a vendor.

The question is not whether agentic commerce will grow. The question is who gets to define how it works. And who gets left packing boxes for someone else's algorithm?